Disc menu missing when opening PE4 project with PE7

[dsttexas]

I decided to do some updates to a previous movie project that was originally created using PE4. I opened it in PE7, did some edits and many periodic saves, but when I wanted to verify the Menu items all still worked correctly, the original menu pages are missing from the selections, and the default disc menu opened was blank. I went to various places where I would have begun scenes or ended them, and there are no menu markers ("Clear menu marker" greyed out). If I attempt to create a new Menu Marker, it shows it as "Marker 1 of 1". I opened the file directly from the Open Projects dialog, from the original PE4 folder. I made only sound level adjustments, added one title, and did not change the positioning of any scene, narration, or audio tracks (which might have moved the time line based markers).

Please don't tell me I'm stuck with recreating them! Any suggestions how I can retrieve them?

Does anyone have a PE4 movie they can recreate this situation with PE7?

Thank you!
Don

[Steve Grisetti]

Unfortunately, opening a project created in a previous version of the program with a newer version almost always leads to some sort of buggy behavior. And the program did go through some major changes between versions 4 and 7.

You don't say if you saved the project after you opened it in version 7 -- in which case you'd have overwritten the original project unfortunately.

If that's the case, you may be able to recover the original project from one of its Auto-Save files. Though, if you can, be sure to open it in version 4 -- and remember to always finish a project in same version of the program you began it in.

If you don't have an auto-save file, you may need to manually debug the project or, quite possibly, redo part or all of it.

Fortunately, if your only problem is with the menus and things get too buggy, you can use Share/Personal Computer/AVI to export your finished project, which you can load onto the timeline of a new project and add your menu markers and menus there.

[Chuck Engels]

Hi Don,
I created a project in version 4, place the DVD Scene Markers (20 of them), and saved the project with the Drive In DVD Menu.

I then opened the project with version 7 and all menus and markers were still there.
Did you save a copy of the version 4 project before opening it in version7 ?

[Chuck Engels]

On another note, I don't think there is very much difference between versions 4 and 7 Steve.
They are only one version apart as there was no 5 or 6.

I opened the version 4 project in version 7, saved the project and then opened it in version 4 again.
It works fine and there are no issues in either version as far as I can tell. I have made audio changes, simple edits, a few effects, and I can open the project in either version 4 or version 7 without any issues. Kind of cool

[dsttexas]

Thanks guys. Here's where I'm at - for others who may face the same situation.

I was stupid enough to do a "save as" on top of the original project name, and reply yes to overwrite. This occurred after a couple auto-saves had taken place, and a number of edits where I issued "save" on my own, and then there were at least a couple instances of PE completely disappearing, restarting again from the saved project (not an autosave). Somewhere in those 2 or 3 crashes I lost the menu data I presume, and saved over the project file that did have them.

I did have an avi file I had created under PE4 that I dragged onto PE7 timeline, but it did not have the menus either - only the video. And of course all the audio tracks were now merged as one, so I couldn't redo my previous editing.

Just for fun, I opened a PE3 project with PE7 and the menus were there, but under Preview, it only painted the outline of the preview box, played the background music, but did not show the picture or click options.

Anyway, I have located one of the very last autosaves from the original project, and opened it with PE7 - menus are there and do preview fine. I have now saved this as a new project!! And can now redo those minor audio edits - hopefully successfully. Will let you all know. It's timestamp was a few hours before that of the dvd files, so should be fine.

I had deleted the version 4 program, so could not use it.

Thanks for the suggestions...
Don

[Chuck Engels]

Sounds like you are on your way to making your changes and all is right with the world again